Bush’s Real Choices

I’d always been dubious on the subject of President Bush’s Christianity. The media, largely secular, took it for granted, and so did a majority of evangelicals, who embraced him as one of their own and supported him in two presidential elections. They all ignored the lack of reverence in Bush’s personal demeanor, the lack of charity in his policy-making; his blithe willingness to bear false witness, and his eagerness to go to war. Maybe it helps to be Catholic to notice these inconsistencies. But I always figured that anyone with even a glancing familiarity with the New Testament would see these qualities as anything but Christian.

Still, the testimony of many who’ve come into contact with the president suggests that, at the very least, Bush truly does consider himself a Christian. This self-identification will have everything to do with the choice he makes about Iraq in the next few months.

For the Pentagon, the choices are these: “Go big, go long or go home.” But for President Bush, this war has always been personal. In the aftermath of September 11, Bush told many people that he believed that had God placed him in the presidency for a purpose, and that with 9/11 that purpose had been revealed. In the run-up to the Iraq War, he assured people around him that he’d prayed over the matter and that God had assured him this was the right course and that it would go well.

Well, it hasn’t gone well. So, from the president’s viewpoint, what does that mean? If Bush believed he was God’s chosen at this juncture of history — and if God assured him that the Iraq War was the right course — what does it mean when it all goes bad? If previous practice is any indicator, the course of action the president takes may have less to do with practical considerations and more to do with which interpretation of the past he prefers to believe, and which accompanying philosophical and psychological landscape he wants to live in.

So these are his choices. In light of his stated belief, the president must choose now to believe one of the following:

1. His troubles right now are just a test. God has a way of testing his favorites, after all. The course for even the most pious is rarely smooth. Therefore the calamity in Iraq and the political reversals at home must be met by increased resolve. There’s only one choice…stay the course.

2. God wanted him to go to war, but Rumsfeld and the generals didn’t wage it properly. Just because God tells you to do something, it doesn’t mean he also tells you how to do it. Just because ultimate victory is assured, it doesn’t mean it’s not subject to delay by human error. We need to change courses in order to win. Therefore…increase the troop levels.

3. God lied. God purposely told him to go to Iraq, knowing it would go badly. But why? This makes no sense at all, unless you believe God is working for the other side. There’s certainly no policy prescription to take from it, just despair. Bush would reject this notion, and should.

4. God did not tell him to go to Iraq. Bush wanted to go to war and convinced himself that God approved his action. Believing this requires a huge cosmological leap, and yet any possibility of salvaging his presidency rests on the president’s ability to make it. It’s a bitter pill, all right: To accept this notion, the president will have to believe that his pipeline to God was a function of his own pride, and that he has no special calling, that he is a politician like any other whose power derives, not from divine decree, but through human agency. That means that the people who disagree with him are not Godless. They just happen to have another opinion.

It’s this choice that opens up the most possibilities, in terms of policy. But its requirements are great. It entails a change in the president’s self-conception and a reversal in his concept of presidential mission. It also means that he’s all alone in there. To paraphrase JFK, he could ask “His blessing, and His help…but here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

5. God doesn’t exist. Some people might actually be relieved if Bush were to suddenly become an atheist. But though closed-minded zealotry is disastrous in a leader, it’s also true that presidents as diverse as Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower and Carter have derived comfort, purpose and a healthy sense of humility from their religious faith. Faith as a source of humility, not arrogance, may be the key element here.